


A Commonplace Love Story

by EmmyAngua



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Love, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyAngua/pseuds/EmmyAngua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is a Lifer, destined to be normal and live to one-hundred and sixty. Sherlock is a Burnout, destined to be brilliant but die at forty. When they meet they’re already running out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Commonplace Love Story

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by Small Hobbit and brittaniethekid. All mistakes are the result of my own meddling. The couch-cuddling is for flawedamythyst.

_1867_

 

Medical textbooks remain vague on the subject of the Choice. Years of research have failed to find a physiological or biological clue to its origin and reports of the sensation vary so wildly that little meaningful research has ever been done. There is only one certain fact; like death and taxes, the Choice comes for everyone.

 

John was sixteen when it happened; a typical age. He’d imagined it many times, but he never expected it would happen while he was dining with his family.

 

His sister was to his left, reading and ignoring their mother, who was berating her for her rudeness. His father was focused intently on the cut of meat on his plate, as John had been a few seconds before. Now he sat frozen in place, hoping desperately that no one had noticed.

 

Some people claimed that the sensation was like standing in front of two doors, or at a fork in the road. Others described flashes of hot or cold or the feeling that there was something hovering in front of them that they wanted to reach out and take.

 

For John, it was his hands. He found himself fixated on them as they held his knife and fork. His right hand was perfectly still, but his left hand trembled. He didn’t dare move, or breathe. Every instinct in his body was saying the same thing.

 

_Left._

_Left._

_Left._

 

Somehow he just knew what his decision would mean, and it was suddenly the easiest thing in the world. He tightened his grip on the fork in his hand, stopping the trembling.

 

The decision was made. His body understood.

 

John Watson would remain as himself, of average intelligence and talents, but would be gifted with extra time to develop. He would live until the age of one-hundred and sixty. He was a Lifer.

 

 

\--

 

 

Sherlock Holmes was brilliant even before the Choice came for him.

 

To him it was an unexceptional moment. He was sitting in a hot bath puzzling over a small matter regarding the housekeeper’s dog.

 

The answer was just out of reach. He could sense the shape of it but it was maddeningly difficult to grasp. He slapped his hand down in frustration, splashing water across the bathroom.

 

But suddenly he felt as though the answer was in front of him. It almost seemed like a real thing that he could reach out and touch if he chose to do so.

 

 _Ah_ , he thought, recognising the moment for what it was.

 

He didn’t even have to consider. He wanted to know. He reached out and the answer came to him at once.

 

 _The postman_ , of course. He sank back into the water, satisfied.

 

Sherlock Holmes was brilliant and he fully intended to find out how brilliant he could be. Dying at the age of forty was a small price to pay for that.

 

Sherlock Holmes was a Burnout.

 

 

\--

 

 

It was a complaint so commonplace as to be wearisome for the doctors that dealt with it regularly; “I’ve made the wrong choice, doctor, what do I do?”

 

John’s university lecturer had been stern on the matter.

_“On the subject of relationships between Lifers and Burnouts, you must be firm. They will come to you desperate for a way to reverse their decision, a way to give them more time with their lovers. Remember that the Choice isn’t dictated by love, it’s about the individual. They would be far unhappier living an alternate life. Burnouts and Lifers fall in love all the time; the pain will eventually fade.”_

 

John’s first broken-hearted patient was a Lifer in her early thirties. She clutched at a picture of her late husband and dabbed at her eyes with a black lace handkerchief.

 

“I always knew it was going to happen… but it never felt real. Now I have to carry on alone. If only he’d made a different choice. If only I...”

 

“Mrs. Long,” John said kindly, “this is a very sad time, but you’ve made the right choice. You have a hundred and thirty years ahead of you. You _will_ be happy again.”

 

She fixed her tired eyes on John. “No Doctor Watson, I won’t.”

 

John was saddened but not surprised when, two weeks later, she escaped her family’s watch and found a simpler way to avoid living out the rest of her life.

 

It was terribly sad, but it was a commonplace love story.

 

 

\--

 

 

Just because John’s natural death date was set in stone, it didn’t mean that death might not occur some other way. Heart-attacks struck, sharks attacked, bullets rained down in countless wars and villages were wiped out by disease.

 

John avoided heart-attacks and sharks, tried his best to help with disease, but was finally caught out by an unexpected bullet. His long recovery deposited him back in London, leaving him to consider the years ( _and years and years_ ) ahead. 

 

Until Stamford, a fellow Lifer, introduced him to Sherlock Holmes.

 

John knew many Burnouts. They were all brilliant, though not always in obvious ways. Whatever skill they excelled at, it was always one that mattered to them, consumed them, or one that they simply needed to survive. He’d met great singers and artists. He’d met a man who could convince anyone to buy anything from him. During the war he’d spent a night with a woman who’d turned her gifts to pleasuring men and despite her riches he’d felt sorry for her afterwards.

 

Brilliance took many forms, but Holmes seemed to have an endless supply of it. He had so much to say, to explain; as if he couldn’t possibly contain it all.

 

How could John do anything but follow him?

 

Within days they shared rooms and within weeks they were sharing one bedroom on a regular basis. Their first kiss was hidden in the darkness, only a few feet away from the police. The embrace was sudden, intense.

 

Their lovemaking was much the same. Sherlock was a demanding lover, frantic and hungry. He didn’t care who saw or overheard and on many occasions it was John’s iron will alone that prevented them from being caught.

 

In 221b Sherlock was reckless. John had barely stepped indoors one January morning after visiting a patient, when he was dragged into the bedroom and pushed backwards onto the bed. Then, with his prey helpless, Sherlock pounced.   

 

“Hold on!” John laughed, protesting weakly. “There’s no rush!”

 

Sherlock broke the kiss and looked down at John as though he’d lost his mind.

 

“ _Yes there is_.”

 

John knew Sherlock was a Burnout from the start, but he’d pushed it from his mind. He never intended to fall in love, and by then it was too _late_. Sherlock was younger than him, but even so, they were less than five years from Sherlock’s fortieth birthday.

 

That night their love-making was desperate.

 

As Sherlock’s fortieth birthday drew nearer the time constraint took began to take its toll. He now slept only when his body left him with no other choice, and when that happened he woke up furious with himself. Gone were the lazy days in which John read while Sherlock worked on his experiments; every day became a frantic rush and work and thrills.  

 

And god forbid the criminal classes left Sherlock unoccupied for a day. One slow period resulted in several days in bed that had John aching from head to toe for what felt like weeks after.

 

“Do you ever wish you’d made a different choice?” John ventured one day.

 

Sherlock looked back at him blankly. “Of course not.”

 

And there was the answer. As much as Sherlock’s decision seemed incomprehensible to John and the other Lifers, John’s decision for a long, slow life was just as unthinkable to Sherlock and his fellow Burnouts.

 

It wasn’t until the night before Sherlock’s fortieth birthday that Sherlock ever hinted at changing his opinion.

 

They were in bed. Sherlock was deathly pale and pressed in as close to John as physically possible. His eyes were dark with exhaustion, and John knew his own weren’t much better. He’d spent the last few months detesting every moment of sleep for stealing his time with Sherlock.

 

“It wasn’t really a choice,” Sherlock said eventually. “Everyone calls it a choice. But it’s not.”

 

 

\--

 

 

After the funeral John’s life stretched out in front of him, incomprehensibly long. Every morning he looked in the mirror at a face that never changed, one that never aged beyond his fortieth year and would never do so again.

 

He wrote. He wrote down every story he could remember and when he ran out of stories he wrote down all the inconsequential moments too. When he’d recorded every silly conversation, he wrote the sex, and soon he was reduced to mere scraps of memories. His days were spent in silence, remembering, cursing himself for all the moments he’d almost certainly forgotten.

 

Eventually he returned to his work. He read the newspaper again, went on walks, and met up with Clara. He functioned.

 

 

\--

 

 

When the Great War came, John tried to enlist. He was turned away; he was still invalided from Afghan. One year later the situation was worse and the next enlisting officer he tried was not so picky. A trained and willing army surgeon was too useful to be turned away.

 

In the trenches the Burnouts were the hardest to tame. They were angrier than the Lifers. They’d traded most of their existence in exchange for brilliance and they were wasting what was left in a stinking, muddy trench where they were almost certainly going to be slaughtered.

 

When the war ended, John came back determined to live. He didn’t go back to 221b. Sherlock’s death was a constant ache, but a bearable one. The only moment that it overwhelmed him was when he went to get his things back from storage and found his trunk full of journals missing.

 

When the Second World War came, John was one of the first to sign up. He’d started to gain recognition and he was sent on darker, more important missions than ever before.

 

He survived, and this time even he was surprised.

 

The fifties were nice; John travelled. He met Mary while she was working as a singer in a Caribbean hotel. He first heard her voice as he headed down the stairs to dinner. He stopped on the step, closed his eyes, and just listened. He didn’t even need to ask if she was a Burnout.

 

But on those nights with her he wondered whether her choice was really worth it. In twenty years she’d be gone, and in his heart he knew that her death wouldn’t destroy him in the way Sherlock’s had.

 

At the end of the summer he moved on.

 

The sixties were for the Burnouts. It was a decade created by them and for them, while the Lifers were picking up the pieces from the wars. John became almost pathetically dull, clinging on to the Victorian sensibilities he’d never quite left behind, working a respectable job and living in a respectable house.

 

It would have been different if Sherlock had been there. He couldn’t switch on a television without seeing The Beatles or some other Burnouts of their ilk. It made him angry in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend. When the seventies brought along punk, awash with the anger and resentment of those same Burnouts, John wasn’t surprised.

 

He became a career soldier, dipping in and out of the army as conflicts arose. His relationship with his superiors was a long one (he’d known some over seventy years) and for Lifers like him the rules were relaxed. He could go back when he needed to and return home when he wanted. He spent time in the Falklands, got mixed up in the Troubles, before returning to the clusterfuck that was Afghanistan.

 

On the night before he left, he wondered, with a slightly hysterical giggle, whether he’d be fighting the same people he’d left behind a hundred and twenty one years before.

 

He didn’t leave Afghanistan for another nine.

 

When the bullet hit his shoulder he laughed. As he lay there, swimming in his own blood, he laughed. With what was almost certainly his last breath, he turned to Murray and asked if it was the same person who shot him last time.

 

 

\--

 

 

He was limping through the park, cursing the modern love of therapy. He was also furiously cursing his leg. Why a shot to his shoulder would cause a hundred year old wound in his leg to flare up was a complete mystery.

 

“John?”

 

He turned to find Stamford staring at him.

 

“It’s Mike, Mike Stamford.”

 

John smiled at the ‘ _Mike_ ’. It never failed to amaze him how easily some people slid into the future, while others, like him, never quite grasped supermarkets and the remote control.

 

“How are you?”

 

“I’m fine. Not long now though… what about you?”

 

John shrugged, as though he, like every other person on earth, didn’t have their death date memorised. It didn’t surprise him that the eternally cheerful ‘Mike’ was so comfortable with his own farewell.

 

“Two years. Can’t quite believe I made it.”

 

Mike shook his head. “Me neither. I think I avoided all the wars by pure chance – though I volunteered of course.”

 

“Unlike me who jumped into them all head-first?”

 

Mike grinned and raised his coffee.

 

“Still looking for somewhere to live?” he asked.

 

The memory of them having the same conversation so many years before was like a physical pain.

 

“Believe it or not, the army is somewhat kinder to soldiers that have fought in six wars on their behalf. They’re paying me four pensions. And I have savings.”

 

“Bet you’re still living out of boxes in some dive,” Mike teased.

 

John didn’t deny it. “’ _Dive_ ’? Isn’t it enough that you’re all modern, now you’re American too?”

 

Mike laughed. “C’mon. Come back to Barts. Old times’ sake.”

 

John sighed. He had nothing better to do.

 

 

\--

 

 

St. Barts was terrifying: all technology and the acidic cleanliness of modern hospitals. John was more up to date on medicine than most, but this was a whole new world.

 

Mike seemed entirely at ease.

 

“Mike, can I borrow your phone?”

 

John glanced across at the man by the microscope. Young, handsome, and brimming with life… almost certainly a Burnout.

 

“Here,” John pulled out his own. “Use mine.” He rarely used it. Harry, Clara’s great, great, great granddaughter, insisted he have it.

 

The man glanced at him and took the phone gratefully. A moment later the phone was back and the stranger was at his microscope again.

 

“This is John Watson,” Stamford said.

 

The man’s head snapped up.  

 

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

 

“Recently? Afghanistan. Er, how-”

 

The door opened and a young woman appeared. John ignored her soft, nervous words, too busy staring between the stranger and Mike.

 

“I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

 

John gaped. _The same conversation. The exact same-_

 

“What did you say to him?” John demanded.

 

Mike was startled. “Nothing!”

 

The man was already on the move. “Got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow evening; seven o’clock. Sorry – must dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

 

“Wait!” John snapped. “Who are you?”

 

“The name is Sherlock Holmes. And the address is 221b Baker Street.”

_The same name, the same address…_ if the man hadn’t looked so completely different from his Sherlock, John would have believed himself to be dreaming.

 

He rounded on Mike. “Tell me.”

 

Mike held his hands up. “There’s nothing to tell. He turned up one day wanting to use the lab. I don’t know much about him, I thought it was an amazing coincidence what with the names being the same. Some distant cousin, he said… and when I bumped into you I thought it would be funny to bring you to meet him.”

 

“FUNNY!?” John yelled.

 

He paused. Tried to calm himself down. He’d barely seen Stamford since… well since he’d introduced him to Sherlock. The first Sherlock. He couldn’t be blamed for not knowing.

 

“Sorry,” he said. “I… I was close to Holmes.”

 

Mike looked regretful. “I never meant to upset you. I thought it was a coincidence. You don’t have to meet him. I’ll explain next time I see him.”

 

“No,” John sighed. “No, I’ll meet him.”

 

 

\--

 

 

For a kidnapping victim, John was surprisingly calm. He moved slowly towards the waiting man, looking around cautiously.

 

“Y’know, I might not be up to date with all the widgets on my phone… but I _can_ answer it,” he said.

 

“I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, Dr. Watson,” said the man. “I thought it was better we met in person. I know about your relationship with Sherlock Holmes.”

 

John frowned.

 

“I don’t have one. I met him… yesterday.”

 

“And I wasn’t talking about _that_ Sherlock Holmes. I expect you’re thrilled. A whole new version of the man you loved, just as clever, just as brilliant…”

 

“I’m not actually stupid,” John snapped. “You don’t know much about people if you think I’m going to immediately fall in love with him because he’s got the same name and is stirring up some old memories.”

 

The man looked at him long and hard.

 

“Oh you’ll fall love with him. You’re old and sentimental, he’s young and full of life and he’ll inject some adventure into your last few years. You’ll no doubt come to believe that they’re both halves of one great man or some such. I’m actually happy for you, though I never intended any of this to happen.”

 

“Why bring me here?” John demanded. “Why try and warn me off?”

 

“I’m not warning you,” sighed the man. “I wanted to meet you.”

 

“Meet me? Why?”

 

“Because I’m one-hundred and fifty-nine, Dr Watson. Tomorrow I shall be one-hundred and sixty. I’ve watched your career for most of my life and I wanted to meet you before I died.”

 

“Watched me?”

 

“You were the love of my brother’s life. Of course I kept an eye on you.”

 

“Brother?”  John gaped. “Sherlock didn’t have any relations! He never mentioned any!”

 

“Mmm. How very like him. Of course I wasn’t expecting the second Sherlock Holmes to ever happen. A very distant cousin of mine liked the name and gave it to her son. I, foolishly, was amused by how much the young boy reminded me of his predecessor, so I gave him your journals. _Some of them_.”

 

“You stole those?” John demanded.

 

“Of course I did. I wanted to read them. I wasn’t expecting the boy to take an interest, but he did. More than that: a life-long fascination. He tracked down Stamford and befriended him. I suppose he couldn’t imagine his luck when Stamford introduced you.”

 

The man gave a fond smile.

 

“He’s a good boy. Colder than Sherlock ever was, but that’s the modern age for you.”

 

John’s phoned bleeped.

 

 _Baker Street._  
Come at once  
if convenient.  
SH

 

 

\--

 

 

John couldn’t quite believe it, but he was sitting on the sofa hugging Sherlock Holmes.

 

It turned out that Sherlock hadn’t known about Mycroft’s impending death. When John mentioned it he’d sat up sharply and for a second he’d looked… in need of a hug. John had complied.

 

Now they were in a semi-embrace on the sofa, which would have been cuddling but for the slight tension between them.

 

“I’m not him you know,” Sherlock said.

 

“Mycroft?”

 

“No. _Him_.”

 

“I know that,” said John. If anything, he knew that better than anyone.

 

“Tell me how I’m different,” Sherlock demanded.

 

“Deeper voice. Softer accent. Very slightly taller. Different colour eyes. Different… face. Messier hair. Do I have to go on?”

 

“I’m smarter than him,” Sherlock pointed out.

 

“Don’t get too cocky, you haven’t caught this murderer yet.”

 

“I am. Nastier too. High functioning sociopath.”

 

“Well I’ve had a hundred and thirty years to toughen up. And if you’re so mean and evil, why do you care?”

 

Sherlock frowned. “Because Mycroft gave me those books. I was fifteen and all alone… and there was someone like me in them. Someone who wasn’t boring. And he had you. He had a friend. And when I found the other journals, _more than a friend_. I wanted that.”

 

“Yes but the same friend? A little creepy.”

 

Sherlock shrugged. “I never said I wasn’t _creepy_.”

 

John laughed.

 

“And I didn’t hunt you down or anything. You wandered into my life by chance.”

 

“And by pure chance you found the same flat?”

 

Sherlock grinned. “The journals said Mrs. Hudson lived here with her daughter. The _daughter_ I hunted down and _voila_ , bye-bye horrible American husband, hello Baker Street and Mrs. Hudson mark two.”

 

“I’ve only got two years to live,” John pointed out.

 

“I’ve only got six. And there’s every chance I’ll get us both killed before then. Speaking of,” he reluctantly pulled free of John’s embrace, “want to catch a serial killer?”

 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

 

\--

 

 

It was Irene Adler that made John realise that he loved Sherlock Holmes. _This_ Sherlock Holmes.

 

She hunted Sherlock down. She enticed him. They didn’t see the shadows of Moriarty until it was far too late.

 

Irene was the first person John ever misjudged. What concerned him more was Sherlock misjudged her as well. She burned so brightly that Sherlock never recognised the cold burn of the Lifer.

 

People forgot that Lifers caught up in the end. Irene Adler had one-hundred and twenty years of experience to battle Sherlock with. Her biggest weapon was doubt. She made Sherlock doubt himself. She made John doubt Sherlock.

 

She made John question everything.

 

“You love him?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“ _Which him?_ ”

 

In the end it was her death that gave him the answer. It wasn’t about one or the other. He’d loved the first Sherlock and he loved the second, just as Sherlock loved him but still couldn’t help loving Irene.

 

No one ever asked John again, but if they had he would have known how to answer this time.

 

Which him?

 

_Both._

 

 

\--

 

 

“Why today?”

 

John looked long and hard at Ella.

 

“You know why. Look at my file. Look at my date of birth.”

 

Ella didn’t react.

 

“Do you want to hear me say it?”

 

Ella didn’t look down. “Is that the only reason?”

 

“I’m here because... because… Sherlock Holmes is… is dead. And tomorrow I’m going to die.”

 

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Please don’t look TOO hard at the ages and dates. I tried. I may have messed up. The only bit that was slightly dodgy was Mycroft’s age. Let’s all just pretend he’s two years older than John. 
> 
> Writing this involved a lot of me swearing at a calculator, researching actors’ ages, character birthdays, canon dates, and then shouting ‘screw it, artistic license!’ Also I feel very mean for inadvertently suggesting that Lara Pulver looks 40. She doesn’t. 
> 
> Anyway, as a pipsqueak in terms of fandom, I’ll ardently admire and love any reviews, recs, kudos, comments, or virtual high-fives. Oh, OK, you can throw things at me too.


End file.
